Post by Admin Pete on Jul 24, 2015 10:51:46 GMT -5
I found this very long post about OD&D by a guy who calls himself The Sword Emperor from back in March 2013 and an interesting perspective. He has some good points and questions and some things that make me go 
. What do you think?
From [OD&D] Thoughts on, Questions about, and Potential House Rules for OD&D:
. What do you think?From [OD&D] Thoughts on, Questions about, and Potential House Rules for OD&D:
I've been inspired to check out OD&D. After reading several threads, including Old Geezer's pontification threads, and reading several sites, and checking out OSRIC (which I know isn't OD&D, but I"ve read up on the differences), I've had some thoughts, and questions, about OD&D. I've also thought up some of my own house rules I might want to use. I'd like your thoughts on all of this.
Thoughts
Reading about OD&D cleared up a major point of confusion for me. See, I have always thought of roleplaying games as stories about your characters experiencing fantastic adventures. The idea of an antagonistic relationship between the referee and the player sounded absurd, and I found the behavior restrictions placed on classes like the paladin to be absurd. Now, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for a different kind of playstyle.
On OD&D, and other games like Shadowrun, the referee is there to challenge the player, not the character. When I think about it that way, many things make more sense. The idea of the game as a game of logistics and resource management helps solidify a distinctly different kind of game. This is the kind of game where player characters behaving badly because they have low intelligence, or ignoring a troll’s weaknesses that they’re aware of, just doesn’t work out as well. Their character will probably die, and they’ll reroll a new character, and have to do it all over again. From level one, no magical equipment. And the stakes just get higher as you gain levels, because if your level 8 magic user dies, you’re coming back at level 1, with none of his previous spells or magical equipment (unless the party saved them and gives them to the new guy).
You can roleplay, but generally it shouldn’t get in the way of your adventuring party’s planning. The only time roleplaying is enforced is when the rules penalize you for going against them; the paladin’s code of conduct, the alignment experience point penalties. The paladin will weigh the advantage of violating his alignment against the penalties for doing so, and it’s based on a character distinction – this is a character who has chosen to follow a certain code of behavior, and will be punished (or punish himself) for violating it.
This kind of thinking is revolutionary for me. It’s going to affect how I play Shadowrun. It’s also changing my views on min-maxing. Really, min-maxing makes perfect sense in this kind of game. Why not? You can roleplay however you want unless the rules dictate otherwise – so just give yourself as much mechanical advantage as possible (unless you have a need to challenge yourself more than the referee plans to present).
Questions
How do attack rolls work? You refer to your class’ “roll required to hit armour class” chart, roll the die, add up any modifiers the referee finds appropriate, and see if the resulting roll was high enough?
Is there a general design principle behind the AC tables? Like any rhyme or reason/logic?
How do you balance the issue of realism in this game? I mean, suppose my players expect that the monsters have a food source, which would lead the party to figure out strategies like poisoning the food, cutting off the supplies, tempting the monsters with better fare, or raiding the monsters’ supplies to replace their own dwindling rations. If I tell the players, “You find a McDonald’s on the fourth floor, complete with meal prices in copper pieces” (to paraphrase a story from Old Geezer), they’ll stop thinking about the monsters’ food source. But that means it’s one thing they can’t strategize around. If I do that a lot with the dungeon’s structure and inhabitants, I’m concerned that my players will not think very hard about how to proceed through the dungeon, that they will feel less challenged, less need to be creative.
A counterpoint I’m considering is…
Like, that seems like a good middle-ground, although I’d like some advice on how to achieve it. Or, if you’re the kind of referee who runs games with McDonalds’, orcs rising from black ooze, and dwarven construction crews sealing off unfinished levels of the dungeon, could you please tell me how you balance that freedom to construct your dungeon as you will against a player’s concern that critical thinking, and by extension resource management and logistics, won’t be rewarded? You might also look at this as a general question about dungeon design.
What are some reasonable explanations for why a dungeon would be ten or twenty levels deep? I find it helps me to populate and design the dungeon. Also, refraining what I just said above, what are some design principles you use to explain bizarre things? Does it always come back down to “Just say it’s the ruins of a place built by a mad wizard and nobody will question the dungeon’s design”?
I want to just run a short fantasy adventure, but I am concerned about ruining the logistics of the game.
How should I adjust for making a one-shot dungeon? One that I expect the players to clear in one to four sessions?
Advice on tactics in combat? Inspired by black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/03/grumbler.html
To paraphrase OG, the rules of combat are written by wargamers for wargamers.
I’d rather the players come in with the right expectations.
I’ve read that the 3x3 block of characters, with heavily armored people on the front and back, is the optimal way to proceed in combat. But suppose I’m playing with only four or five people; even with hirelings, will they be able to pull that off reasonably? Am I going to crush them horribly if they don’t have enough characters to meet some minimum threshold of character count envisioned by OD&D’s designers?
Also, I really am looking for general advice for how to be tactical/strategic in OD&D’s combat system. I’ve never run with a combat system this abstract, and my only war game experience is a few Warhammer Fantasy battles.
The prerequisite for getting XP from gold and items: you must get to a safe location, and in the case of an item, dispose of the item. Correct?
Line of sight, for anything, including hand axes and magic spells, requires being in the front rank unless the ranks in front of you are occupied by creatures that are significantly shorter than yourself (i.e. a human wizard standing behind a dwarf fighter could still throw a sleep spell), correct?
How could anybody get their maps wrong, i.e. significantly different from the referee’s? I mean, the referee describes the dimensions of the room, and the player fills it in to match. It seems simple enough. Or is there something I’m missing with my armchair musings?
In OD&D, the only purpose for most stats is to serve as prerequisites for certain classes, and to give bonuses to XP if they were above a certain rating (except Charisma, which is awesome). The point was that players should be excited to see what they end up playing; that there was something fun about the randomness. Is that correct? If so, it seems strange to have stats at all. I mean, why not just roll a d3 (later d4, with the thief added) to see what class you end up as (and, if you like the bonus XP, roll a d20, and a 20 means you get the bonus XP)? It just seems like a lot of rolling, with a lot of variability, for statistics that are mostly meaningless except in the extremes. Or am I missing something about the design decision of the six stats?
In regards to play balance between the classes, I notice this claim being frequently made: if a wizard tossed a fireball at an equivalent level fighter (accounting for how much higher level the fighter would be, given the quicker XP progression), then the fighter could survive the fireball, and then chop up the wizard. However, my understanding, coming from 3rd edition, is that wizards’ dangerousness is more in his utility spells at higher levels: the ability to stop time, or entomb somebody in ice, or wreck havoc upon an entire village with a hurricane, or summon a gust of wind to knock someone into a pit, or make himself immune to whatever the fighter tosses at him. Are these issues not a concern in OD&D, and if so, why?
What is level drain meant to represent in character? I know it was introduced to scare the hell out of the players, but I’m trying to figure out how it could be represented in game. The best I can figure is that it literally drains the experience that the character has gained, making him forget how to do things as well; that, and/or it represents a kind of karmic drain. It literally disrupts your place in the world, making your god angry at you (if you’re a cleric) and metaphysically disrupting the plans you’ve laid (explaining why, if you were, say, the lord of a keep, it might come to ruin if you were level drained; things just start going against you).
What should I do if the player asks to know something that their character might know, but they don’t? For example, the players come across some berries in the woods and wonder whether they should eat them. I could tell them, “try them (or serve them to your hirelings) and figure it out” or “go ask a sage/ranger/druid”. That’d keep the player=character knowledge structure intact; but I could instead let them make a roll to see whether they know. I just wonder whether that opens up a can of worms. The same issue applies to astronomy, monster knowledge, and all sorts of other things.
If the DM is challenging his players directly, and death is followed up by just resurrection or creating a new character, then where is the thrill? I mean, won’t players just resort to trial and error, knowing the dungeon will always be there? Sending wave after wave of characters? These are the thoughts that ran through my head. And I hope the answer is that, well, trial and error will make things more difficult, and losing ten characters in a row, to succeed on the eleventh, likely isn’t as exciting as seeing one character succeed and improve. Thoughts?
What’s the point of having levels? Resource management? The idea that the reward is access to cooler stuff? Or is it perhaps inherently tied into the end game that never manifested until ACKS?
grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-oracular-power-of-dice.html This Grognardia article suggests that the referee divests himself of some power by putting a lot of power in the hands of events beyond even the referee’s control. Inclined to agree.But concerned about the classic “rollplaying” conern.
Resource management and logistics are a major part of running OD&D. Could you give me some general advice on implementing them in designing and running a game? In particular, I would like to know about time management; Gary Gygax once wrote an editorial claiming that time management should be an integral part of the game (as if it was the most important part of running a good game). However, the editorial didn’t explain why it was important or how referees should go about implementing it.
Has anyone had an adventure where the players just go “we give up”? As in, the referee found that, in designing the game world-first, instead of revolving around the PCs, it was just an unwinnable situation for the PCs?
Why do they say three characters may walk abreast in a 10’ dungeon corridor? Why not more? Why are dungeon hallways assumed to be 10’ wide?
At least in OSRIC, the rulebook says that characters can “listen” for only so many rounds before they strain themselves. Does that make any sense?
I’m not sure what “surprise” is meant to represent. Is it hesitation? If so, then I’d expect characters would normally check for surprise whenever they’re about to engage, but a well-informed character might have an easier check, or not need to roll at all; and someone planning an ambush while the other party was unaware likely wouldn’t need to check at all (but might if, when they spring, the other party is actually aware). Thoughts?
Why do you roll for your opponents’ initiative? This might be an OSRIC-only question.
Houserules I am Considering
No XP for monsters. I want the adventurers to focus on completing the dungeon, so I will award XP only for treasure, usually: maybe give XP for killing special “wanted” monsters or completing quests.
Anybody can detect and disarm traps, generally speaking. I mean this in the general sense. If I describe an area, my descriptions will usually include a hint about the trap, such as an unusually clean space in the floor, or strange erosion around parts of the wall. Further inspection, on my cues, should give some idea of what they are dealing with, and ways to test for the kind of trap. If they figure out what kind of trap they are dealing with, they can (and must) use their player ingenuity to overcome it. In the case of anything requiring remarkable nerve, precision or timing, I will probably call for a roll to see whether the character accomplishes what the player wants to do. So, here, a trap is everything from a spike pit covered by leaves and disabling a bomb that just dropped into the room.
I have several ideas on how I might portray the thief’s ability to detect and disable traps. A thief requires only one round to make an inspection for traps, whereas other characters require several rounds, or perhaps a full turn. For disabling traps, 1) they can disable complex traps that others could only destroy, opening possibilities to use the trap later or leave no sign to others that the trap was disabled, 2) they have a higher chance than others at succeeding on the nerve, precision, or timing roll (represented by either improved odds on the roll, or a secondary roll if the first fails),. An idea that could work for detecting and disabling: they get a saving throw to mitigate the effects of a trap they don’t notice or accidentally spring, owing to their extraordinary ability to adjust on the fly to deadly traps.
I roll for the PCs’ hit points and give the players only a general idea of how much HP they have. This would increase tension in the game, but it might make players overly cautious or confuse them about how well they’re doing, or interfere with their strategic thinking.
No attributes: no Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. They’re irrelevant except at the extremes, and useful only to decide which class you play (which I don’t care about), and give the impression that you’re judged in your skill by that attribute.
Players do not need to meet prerequisites to join any class. I’m more concerned with players making intelligent decisions within a framework they choose for themselves. Conversely, I can think of one reason to have class prerequisites: in a resource management game, if your character dies, the logical thing for the party to do is to give the replacement character the same gear that the old character had, if he’s the same class. I find this modestly weak, because you can limit equipment to the hands of higher level characters, and characters might lose their equipment anyway when they die, and I’m sure there’s a bunch of other reasons it doesn’t matter too much.
I’m not sure what I want to roll for when the PCs attempt something. I’m thinking of rolling (or having them roll?) d100, modified by the character’s race, class, and circumstances. I’m just not sure what to make the base target number for success. I’m thinking, “roll 10 or lower”, with modifiers for an average task easily pushing it to 50% before considering modifiers for race/class.
I am largely indifferent to the idea of adventurers leveling up and going on to become conquerors and then kings (see what I did there?). I’d likely either eliminate the assumption that higher level characters take on more responsibilities, or better codify it in a way that makes the PCs’ levels come with interesting restrictions. I’ve heard that ACKS does put some oomph back into the end game. I wonder if I’d enjoy that enough to adopt it, or if it’d throw off the dungeon explorer vibe.
Falling always has a chance of damaging objects. Weapons and armor can be destroyed through regular use, though it’s unlikely to happen.
This is more of a long-term thing, like something I’d do if I made a regular campaign: I like the idea of giving players the option to take on codes of conduct, in a general sense. A fighter can belong to a martial tradition, like paladin, or school of combat; a wizard specializes in a school of magic; a demi-human race is subject to certain behaviors; most people have no alignments, but can become a champion of an alignment. Any such decision comes with a general set of principles of behavior, and perhaps some hardline rules. Characters that keep with them get bonuses based on their tradition (a tactician might be able to hire more hirelings, and/or command a higher loyalty and morale rating; a mage school gets more spells of that school; the paladin is… well, the paladin). Of course, there’s the drawbacks to being part of whatever it is, and they come with their own penalties if violated. I’m reminded of Hackmaster, which does something similar. In Hackmaster, you can take flaws: violating them costs you build points when you level up. My favorite one is Slovenly, which in addition to the obvious in-character effects, has a metagame effect that requires you handwrite your own character sheet on a piece of scratch paper and must use that record sheet for the entire game.
Finally, here’s an alternative to hit points (and another long-term thing). Instead of hit points, characters have a “Likelihood of Survival” rated somewhere on a d100% scale. This is an abstract measure of how likely the character is to survive any given obstacle, whether it be a trap or a hand axe, and is a measure of skill, luck and the favor of the gods. This base rating is modified by the given circumstances, and will, in any case, gradually degrade as the character is faced with, and overcomes, more obstacles. It also degrades as the character spends more turns in the dungeon. This encourages clever players to complete the dungeon efficiently, but cleverly, as wasting time means they’re less likely to survive threats deeper in the dungeon, and doing things badly also means they’re likely to suffer. Clerics don’t use (or don’t just use) “cure [x] wounds”; they pray to the gods for favor, and if the gods are willing, they grant it. Also, I could imagine anyone swearing an oath to a god in hopes of surviving something, and possibly getting a bonus in exchange for being duty-bound to doing something (for which backing out of later has terrible karmic consequences). Failing a survival roll means the character is dead or, if you’re the kind who likes negative hit points and “dying”, then on their way out. If you go with the latter, then a dying character rolls against their “likelihood of survival” every turn, and every turn it drops by a certain, significant percentage. This means that characters who stay longer in dungeons are playing a bigger gamble, and part of resource management becomes about keeping the likelihood of survival high. The likelihood of survival naturally recharges with downtime, as the character spends time resting and contemplating how things could have gone better, what to do next time, praying for the favor of the gods, and so forth. One last bit of flavor appeal: there’s something delightfully wicked about letting players see a numerical representation of how likely their characters are to survive, and watching it gradually dwindle. It’s not that different from what hit points do, but it’s easier for me to look at it this way and come up with interesting ways of playing into the resource management aspect of the game.
Thoughts
Reading about OD&D cleared up a major point of confusion for me. See, I have always thought of roleplaying games as stories about your characters experiencing fantastic adventures. The idea of an antagonistic relationship between the referee and the player sounded absurd, and I found the behavior restrictions placed on classes like the paladin to be absurd. Now, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for a different kind of playstyle.
On OD&D, and other games like Shadowrun, the referee is there to challenge the player, not the character. When I think about it that way, many things make more sense. The idea of the game as a game of logistics and resource management helps solidify a distinctly different kind of game. This is the kind of game where player characters behaving badly because they have low intelligence, or ignoring a troll’s weaknesses that they’re aware of, just doesn’t work out as well. Their character will probably die, and they’ll reroll a new character, and have to do it all over again. From level one, no magical equipment. And the stakes just get higher as you gain levels, because if your level 8 magic user dies, you’re coming back at level 1, with none of his previous spells or magical equipment (unless the party saved them and gives them to the new guy).
You can roleplay, but generally it shouldn’t get in the way of your adventuring party’s planning. The only time roleplaying is enforced is when the rules penalize you for going against them; the paladin’s code of conduct, the alignment experience point penalties. The paladin will weigh the advantage of violating his alignment against the penalties for doing so, and it’s based on a character distinction – this is a character who has chosen to follow a certain code of behavior, and will be punished (or punish himself) for violating it.
This kind of thinking is revolutionary for me. It’s going to affect how I play Shadowrun. It’s also changing my views on min-maxing. Really, min-maxing makes perfect sense in this kind of game. Why not? You can roleplay however you want unless the rules dictate otherwise – so just give yourself as much mechanical advantage as possible (unless you have a need to challenge yourself more than the referee plans to present).
Questions
How do attack rolls work? You refer to your class’ “roll required to hit armour class” chart, roll the die, add up any modifiers the referee finds appropriate, and see if the resulting roll was high enough?
Is there a general design principle behind the AC tables? Like any rhyme or reason/logic?
How do you balance the issue of realism in this game? I mean, suppose my players expect that the monsters have a food source, which would lead the party to figure out strategies like poisoning the food, cutting off the supplies, tempting the monsters with better fare, or raiding the monsters’ supplies to replace their own dwindling rations. If I tell the players, “You find a McDonald’s on the fourth floor, complete with meal prices in copper pieces” (to paraphrase a story from Old Geezer), they’ll stop thinking about the monsters’ food source. But that means it’s one thing they can’t strategize around. If I do that a lot with the dungeon’s structure and inhabitants, I’m concerned that my players will not think very hard about how to proceed through the dungeon, that they will feel less challenged, less need to be creative.
A counterpoint I’m considering is…
Quote Originally Posted by poleandrope.blogspot.com/2008/12/with-new-old-eyes.html
“Stop worrying and love the dungeon” … All too often, we forget that this hobby is, first and foremost, a recreational activity meant to engender fun and excitement. It’s not supposed to be a scientific exercise to create a rational and plausible world simulation, although there are those of us who seek to achieve that exact goal. If you are the type of person who gets enjoyment out of such an exercise, then, by all means, continue to do what you do. However, if you’re the type of person who finds themselves bogged down by such matters as ecology, realistic construction feats, inter-societal co-existence, and plausible economic systems, then relax, close your eyes and repeat the above. The dungeon is always going to be funky, quirky, illogical and implausible. You can control how funky, quirky, illogical and implausible, of course, but never feel the need to completely eradicate all of these charms from the dungeon. If your players truly wanted a realistic subterranean locale to explore, they’d have taken up spelunking, not fantasy role-playing.
“Stop worrying and love the dungeon” … All too often, we forget that this hobby is, first and foremost, a recreational activity meant to engender fun and excitement. It’s not supposed to be a scientific exercise to create a rational and plausible world simulation, although there are those of us who seek to achieve that exact goal. If you are the type of person who gets enjoyment out of such an exercise, then, by all means, continue to do what you do. However, if you’re the type of person who finds themselves bogged down by such matters as ecology, realistic construction feats, inter-societal co-existence, and plausible economic systems, then relax, close your eyes and repeat the above. The dungeon is always going to be funky, quirky, illogical and implausible. You can control how funky, quirky, illogical and implausible, of course, but never feel the need to completely eradicate all of these charms from the dungeon. If your players truly wanted a realistic subterranean locale to explore, they’d have taken up spelunking, not fantasy role-playing.
Like, that seems like a good middle-ground, although I’d like some advice on how to achieve it. Or, if you’re the kind of referee who runs games with McDonalds’, orcs rising from black ooze, and dwarven construction crews sealing off unfinished levels of the dungeon, could you please tell me how you balance that freedom to construct your dungeon as you will against a player’s concern that critical thinking, and by extension resource management and logistics, won’t be rewarded? You might also look at this as a general question about dungeon design.
What are some reasonable explanations for why a dungeon would be ten or twenty levels deep? I find it helps me to populate and design the dungeon. Also, refraining what I just said above, what are some design principles you use to explain bizarre things? Does it always come back down to “Just say it’s the ruins of a place built by a mad wizard and nobody will question the dungeon’s design”?
I want to just run a short fantasy adventure, but I am concerned about ruining the logistics of the game.
How should I adjust for making a one-shot dungeon? One that I expect the players to clear in one to four sessions?
Advice on tactics in combat? Inspired by black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/03/grumbler.html
To paraphrase OG, the rules of combat are written by wargamers for wargamers.
I’d rather the players come in with the right expectations.
I’ve read that the 3x3 block of characters, with heavily armored people on the front and back, is the optimal way to proceed in combat. But suppose I’m playing with only four or five people; even with hirelings, will they be able to pull that off reasonably? Am I going to crush them horribly if they don’t have enough characters to meet some minimum threshold of character count envisioned by OD&D’s designers?
Also, I really am looking for general advice for how to be tactical/strategic in OD&D’s combat system. I’ve never run with a combat system this abstract, and my only war game experience is a few Warhammer Fantasy battles.
The prerequisite for getting XP from gold and items: you must get to a safe location, and in the case of an item, dispose of the item. Correct?
Line of sight, for anything, including hand axes and magic spells, requires being in the front rank unless the ranks in front of you are occupied by creatures that are significantly shorter than yourself (i.e. a human wizard standing behind a dwarf fighter could still throw a sleep spell), correct?
How could anybody get their maps wrong, i.e. significantly different from the referee’s? I mean, the referee describes the dimensions of the room, and the player fills it in to match. It seems simple enough. Or is there something I’m missing with my armchair musings?
In OD&D, the only purpose for most stats is to serve as prerequisites for certain classes, and to give bonuses to XP if they were above a certain rating (except Charisma, which is awesome). The point was that players should be excited to see what they end up playing; that there was something fun about the randomness. Is that correct? If so, it seems strange to have stats at all. I mean, why not just roll a d3 (later d4, with the thief added) to see what class you end up as (and, if you like the bonus XP, roll a d20, and a 20 means you get the bonus XP)? It just seems like a lot of rolling, with a lot of variability, for statistics that are mostly meaningless except in the extremes. Or am I missing something about the design decision of the six stats?
In regards to play balance between the classes, I notice this claim being frequently made: if a wizard tossed a fireball at an equivalent level fighter (accounting for how much higher level the fighter would be, given the quicker XP progression), then the fighter could survive the fireball, and then chop up the wizard. However, my understanding, coming from 3rd edition, is that wizards’ dangerousness is more in his utility spells at higher levels: the ability to stop time, or entomb somebody in ice, or wreck havoc upon an entire village with a hurricane, or summon a gust of wind to knock someone into a pit, or make himself immune to whatever the fighter tosses at him. Are these issues not a concern in OD&D, and if so, why?
What is level drain meant to represent in character? I know it was introduced to scare the hell out of the players, but I’m trying to figure out how it could be represented in game. The best I can figure is that it literally drains the experience that the character has gained, making him forget how to do things as well; that, and/or it represents a kind of karmic drain. It literally disrupts your place in the world, making your god angry at you (if you’re a cleric) and metaphysically disrupting the plans you’ve laid (explaining why, if you were, say, the lord of a keep, it might come to ruin if you were level drained; things just start going against you).
What should I do if the player asks to know something that their character might know, but they don’t? For example, the players come across some berries in the woods and wonder whether they should eat them. I could tell them, “try them (or serve them to your hirelings) and figure it out” or “go ask a sage/ranger/druid”. That’d keep the player=character knowledge structure intact; but I could instead let them make a roll to see whether they know. I just wonder whether that opens up a can of worms. The same issue applies to astronomy, monster knowledge, and all sorts of other things.
If the DM is challenging his players directly, and death is followed up by just resurrection or creating a new character, then where is the thrill? I mean, won’t players just resort to trial and error, knowing the dungeon will always be there? Sending wave after wave of characters? These are the thoughts that ran through my head. And I hope the answer is that, well, trial and error will make things more difficult, and losing ten characters in a row, to succeed on the eleventh, likely isn’t as exciting as seeing one character succeed and improve. Thoughts?
What’s the point of having levels? Resource management? The idea that the reward is access to cooler stuff? Or is it perhaps inherently tied into the end game that never manifested until ACKS?
grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-oracular-power-of-dice.html This Grognardia article suggests that the referee divests himself of some power by putting a lot of power in the hands of events beyond even the referee’s control. Inclined to agree.But concerned about the classic “rollplaying” conern.
Resource management and logistics are a major part of running OD&D. Could you give me some general advice on implementing them in designing and running a game? In particular, I would like to know about time management; Gary Gygax once wrote an editorial claiming that time management should be an integral part of the game (as if it was the most important part of running a good game). However, the editorial didn’t explain why it was important or how referees should go about implementing it.
Has anyone had an adventure where the players just go “we give up”? As in, the referee found that, in designing the game world-first, instead of revolving around the PCs, it was just an unwinnable situation for the PCs?
Why do they say three characters may walk abreast in a 10’ dungeon corridor? Why not more? Why are dungeon hallways assumed to be 10’ wide?
At least in OSRIC, the rulebook says that characters can “listen” for only so many rounds before they strain themselves. Does that make any sense?
I’m not sure what “surprise” is meant to represent. Is it hesitation? If so, then I’d expect characters would normally check for surprise whenever they’re about to engage, but a well-informed character might have an easier check, or not need to roll at all; and someone planning an ambush while the other party was unaware likely wouldn’t need to check at all (but might if, when they spring, the other party is actually aware). Thoughts?
Why do you roll for your opponents’ initiative? This might be an OSRIC-only question.
Houserules I am Considering
No XP for monsters. I want the adventurers to focus on completing the dungeon, so I will award XP only for treasure, usually: maybe give XP for killing special “wanted” monsters or completing quests.
Anybody can detect and disarm traps, generally speaking. I mean this in the general sense. If I describe an area, my descriptions will usually include a hint about the trap, such as an unusually clean space in the floor, or strange erosion around parts of the wall. Further inspection, on my cues, should give some idea of what they are dealing with, and ways to test for the kind of trap. If they figure out what kind of trap they are dealing with, they can (and must) use their player ingenuity to overcome it. In the case of anything requiring remarkable nerve, precision or timing, I will probably call for a roll to see whether the character accomplishes what the player wants to do. So, here, a trap is everything from a spike pit covered by leaves and disabling a bomb that just dropped into the room.
I have several ideas on how I might portray the thief’s ability to detect and disable traps. A thief requires only one round to make an inspection for traps, whereas other characters require several rounds, or perhaps a full turn. For disabling traps, 1) they can disable complex traps that others could only destroy, opening possibilities to use the trap later or leave no sign to others that the trap was disabled, 2) they have a higher chance than others at succeeding on the nerve, precision, or timing roll (represented by either improved odds on the roll, or a secondary roll if the first fails),. An idea that could work for detecting and disabling: they get a saving throw to mitigate the effects of a trap they don’t notice or accidentally spring, owing to their extraordinary ability to adjust on the fly to deadly traps.
I roll for the PCs’ hit points and give the players only a general idea of how much HP they have. This would increase tension in the game, but it might make players overly cautious or confuse them about how well they’re doing, or interfere with their strategic thinking.
No attributes: no Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. They’re irrelevant except at the extremes, and useful only to decide which class you play (which I don’t care about), and give the impression that you’re judged in your skill by that attribute.
Players do not need to meet prerequisites to join any class. I’m more concerned with players making intelligent decisions within a framework they choose for themselves. Conversely, I can think of one reason to have class prerequisites: in a resource management game, if your character dies, the logical thing for the party to do is to give the replacement character the same gear that the old character had, if he’s the same class. I find this modestly weak, because you can limit equipment to the hands of higher level characters, and characters might lose their equipment anyway when they die, and I’m sure there’s a bunch of other reasons it doesn’t matter too much.
I’m not sure what I want to roll for when the PCs attempt something. I’m thinking of rolling (or having them roll?) d100, modified by the character’s race, class, and circumstances. I’m just not sure what to make the base target number for success. I’m thinking, “roll 10 or lower”, with modifiers for an average task easily pushing it to 50% before considering modifiers for race/class.
I am largely indifferent to the idea of adventurers leveling up and going on to become conquerors and then kings (see what I did there?). I’d likely either eliminate the assumption that higher level characters take on more responsibilities, or better codify it in a way that makes the PCs’ levels come with interesting restrictions. I’ve heard that ACKS does put some oomph back into the end game. I wonder if I’d enjoy that enough to adopt it, or if it’d throw off the dungeon explorer vibe.
Falling always has a chance of damaging objects. Weapons and armor can be destroyed through regular use, though it’s unlikely to happen.
This is more of a long-term thing, like something I’d do if I made a regular campaign: I like the idea of giving players the option to take on codes of conduct, in a general sense. A fighter can belong to a martial tradition, like paladin, or school of combat; a wizard specializes in a school of magic; a demi-human race is subject to certain behaviors; most people have no alignments, but can become a champion of an alignment. Any such decision comes with a general set of principles of behavior, and perhaps some hardline rules. Characters that keep with them get bonuses based on their tradition (a tactician might be able to hire more hirelings, and/or command a higher loyalty and morale rating; a mage school gets more spells of that school; the paladin is… well, the paladin). Of course, there’s the drawbacks to being part of whatever it is, and they come with their own penalties if violated. I’m reminded of Hackmaster, which does something similar. In Hackmaster, you can take flaws: violating them costs you build points when you level up. My favorite one is Slovenly, which in addition to the obvious in-character effects, has a metagame effect that requires you handwrite your own character sheet on a piece of scratch paper and must use that record sheet for the entire game.
Finally, here’s an alternative to hit points (and another long-term thing). Instead of hit points, characters have a “Likelihood of Survival” rated somewhere on a d100% scale. This is an abstract measure of how likely the character is to survive any given obstacle, whether it be a trap or a hand axe, and is a measure of skill, luck and the favor of the gods. This base rating is modified by the given circumstances, and will, in any case, gradually degrade as the character is faced with, and overcomes, more obstacles. It also degrades as the character spends more turns in the dungeon. This encourages clever players to complete the dungeon efficiently, but cleverly, as wasting time means they’re less likely to survive threats deeper in the dungeon, and doing things badly also means they’re likely to suffer. Clerics don’t use (or don’t just use) “cure [x] wounds”; they pray to the gods for favor, and if the gods are willing, they grant it. Also, I could imagine anyone swearing an oath to a god in hopes of surviving something, and possibly getting a bonus in exchange for being duty-bound to doing something (for which backing out of later has terrible karmic consequences). Failing a survival roll means the character is dead or, if you’re the kind who likes negative hit points and “dying”, then on their way out. If you go with the latter, then a dying character rolls against their “likelihood of survival” every turn, and every turn it drops by a certain, significant percentage. This means that characters who stay longer in dungeons are playing a bigger gamble, and part of resource management becomes about keeping the likelihood of survival high. The likelihood of survival naturally recharges with downtime, as the character spends time resting and contemplating how things could have gone better, what to do next time, praying for the favor of the gods, and so forth. One last bit of flavor appeal: there’s something delightfully wicked about letting players see a numerical representation of how likely their characters are to survive, and watching it gradually dwindle. It’s not that different from what hit points do, but it’s easier for me to look at it this way and come up with interesting ways of playing into the resource management aspect of the game.
